Accurate dot placement of ink droplets on a print media with an inkjet printer influences the quality of images printed on the print media. One problem that comprises accurate dot placement is swath height errors of the inkjet printhead. Swath height errors are commonly produced by mechanical defects in the substrate of the printhead and can produce erroneous dot placement artifacts in the media scan axis.
To solve this problem, a variety of methods have been used to compensate for artifacts in the media scan axis. For example, one method included adjusting the media advance to match the swath height error of the particular printhead. With this approach, the selection of a single media advance correction scheme is applied to all printheads in the system.
However, this can be problematic in multi-printhead systems that have printheads with varying swath height errors. For example, in a particular printing system with multiple printheads, a first printhead may have a negative swath height error of 21 μm, while a second printhead may have a positive swath height error of 15 μm, and a third printhead may have no error at all. In this case, the single advance correction scheme will not correct the swath height errors for the entire printing system, but only one of the printheads.
In addition, a single advance correction may change the scaling factor of the image, which could have negative implications for line art drawing applications, such as printouts for computer aided design applications.